America Movil announced that it will sell the iPhone in all its Latin American markets (currently 16 countries, but soon also Panama) before the end of 2008 in a short press release on its website.
The countries will be Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay. Too bad America Movil can’t sell the iPhone via its US American no frills phone subsidary TracFone.
Our foreign correspondent Achim has compiled a list of the iPhone’s international roll-out schedule. If we missed something, please let us know.
Vodafone, which didn’t participate in the launch of the iPhone in its home country, England, has now partnered with Apple to launch the iPhone in 10 different countries. Later this year, customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone from Vodafone. In a short message on its website.
Vodafone announced the launch, avoiding any reference to which model (2.5G via EDGE or the rumored 3G via UMTS) will be offered.
In addition Telecom Italia Mobile confirmed the news story from last week, that they will be selling the iPhone in Italy soon. Which will make Italy the first country where customers can get the iPhone from two different providers. This can be seen as a
confirmation that Apple is slowly but surely moving away from the “you can be our exclusive partner, dear telco, but you have to agree to fork over a share of the usage revenue” model and is really going for overall smart phone market share, leaving some of that nice recurring revenue stream on the table.
While we cover a more serious brand of photography here at This Week in Photography, as an iPhone junky and a photographer, I couldn’t help being amused by this statistic I saw on Flickr.
According to Flickr, more camera phone photos on Flickr come from an iPhone than any other camera phone, including the much heralded Nokia N95.
Flickr points out that the graphs are only accurate to the extent that we can automatically detect the camera used to take the photo or shoot the video (about 2/3rds of the time). That is not usually possible with cameraphones, therefore they are under-represented.
While this really means nothing, I found it amusing and thought you might too.
CROSS-POSTED AT TWIPPHOTO.COM
Several of you have contacted me to point out that Fortune Magazine ran a piece saying AT&T would subsidize the next iPhone. This is a rumor. While Fortune has better sources than I do, nothing changes for me. A rumor is a rumor. So we’re checking with our sources. But I think there are some big holes in this story so, I wouldn’t count on a $200 3G iPhone just yet.
I’ve said it was Rogers all along - some of you argued - it’s Rogers and they’ve confirmed via a news release their intent to distribute the iPhone in Canada.
Here’s a link to the iPhone news release.
But let me save you a jump to their page because this is probably the shortest news release we’ve ever received at the Apple Phone Show…
“We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the
iPhone to Canada later this year. We can’t tell you any more about it right
now, but stay tuned.”
That’s it. But it is a confirmation. There’s no mention of the Trademark problem that Apple has with Canadian-owned Comwave. I suppose Rogers is leaving that up to Apple since Rogers isn’t party to the suit.
A UMTS iPhone might come to Italy soon. At least according to the Monday edition of the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica”.
No concrete release date was given by the newspaper’s sources inside Telecom Italia Mobile, just that it’s coming in the next several weeks and that it will be a UMTS version.
And in a sign that Apple’s sales strategy is changing rapidly, Telecom Italia Mobile is no longer bound by a multi-year exclusive deal with an ongoing revenue share for voice and data usage. Apple will just get a cut from the initial (slightly higher) sales price. In return Telecom Italia Mobile gets a six month head start in Italy but then the iPhone will be sold through other providers.
Looks like Apple is adjusting after the somewhat disappointing sales of the iPhone in the UK, France and Germany and trying to find other sales strategies to still reach the goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008.
